The 66th Space Shuttle flight began with a nearly on-time liftoff of the Orbiter Atlantis (STS-66) into the clear Florida skies. Atlantis returned to space after a nearly two year absence. The plarned 11-day flight will continue NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, a comprehensive international collaboration to study how Earth's environment is changing and how human beings affect that change. Primary payloads on this flight included the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-3), making its third flight, and the German-built Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Satellite (CRISTA-SPAS), which was deployed and retrieved during the mission.

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